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B5867
Date: July 15, 2016
ROBERT STRAND
M A RT I N M U L V I HI L L
Levi Strauss & Co.: Driving Adoption of Green Chemistry
Individual action by one brand will not create the
scale and scope of change we need.
—A NNA W ALKER , S ENIOR D IRECTOR
G LOBAL POLICY AND ADV OCACY
Bart Sights, Vice President of Technical Innovation and the head of Eureka—Levi Strauss &
Co.’s (LS&Co.) Innovation Lab—was feeling excited after a biannual meeting in late 2015 with
ZDHC (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals), an apparel industry collaboration of various
brands such as LS&Co., Nike, and H&M. At the meeting, LS&Co. had briefed the 26 ZDHC
brands on its new Screened Chemistry Program, developed in 2013 to shift the company and the
industry from a risk-based approach towards a hazard-based approach on chemicals. The
program screened chemical formulations (a mixture of chemical ingredients) against human and
environmental health hazard endpoints before chemicals entered the supply chain, managing
chemistry upfront during the design phase instead of in the middle or at the end of the
manufacturing process. This shift represented a radical departure—by screening chemicals for
hazard before they entered the supply chain, LS&Co. was attempting to change the status quo of
the relationship among brands, manufacturers, and chemical providers.
Traditionally, LS&Co. and other brands’ efforts to reduce hazardous chemicals and
environmental pollution in the supply chain focused on risk-based Restricted Substance Lists
(RSLs) that identified chemicals the company did not permit in its products. These lists ensured
compliance with international chemical regulations, but they did little to push toward the use of
more sustainable chemistries in the textile supply chain. LS&Co. and others believed that there
Professor Martin Mulvihill (Senior Advisor at the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry) and Professor Robert Strand
(Executive Director for the Berkeley-Haas Center for Responsible Business and Assistant Professor, Copenhagen
Business School) prepared this case with Case Writer Victoria Chang as the basis for class discussion rather than to
illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.
Copyright © 2016 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the
Berkeley-Haas Case Series.
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LEVI STRAUSS 2
must be a better way to manage chemicals in the supply chain to protect people and the
environment.
LS&Co.’s desire to shift from risk-based assessment to hazard-based assessment required new
thinking, strategies, and processes. Collaboration meant working with industry-wide
organizations such as ZDHC on chemicals management to achieve the previously stated goal of
zero discharge of hazardous chemicals by 2020 and bring systemic change across the apparel and
textile industry: “Ultimately, it takes more than one company to make a difference. By sharing
our approach with others—and they with us—we can work together to move our industry forward
while reducing our impact on the planet. Sure, we’re a leader, but through collaboration and
cooperation with governments, NGOs, suppliers and even competitors, we can ensure the
progress we make is shared.”1 By the end of 2015, LS&Co. had screened chemical formulations
for its products at three of its laundry vendors and was expanding to another 20 laundry vendors
in 2016.
Despite LS&Co.’s progress, Sights knew that bringing change to the industry would not be easy
or fast. Some challenges included resistance from chemical suppliers, multiple industry
standards, different brand standards, scaling of third-party assessments and a generally slowmoving industry.
Background, Sustainability, and Governance
LS&Co. designed and marketed jeans, casual wear, and related accessories for men, women, and
children under the Levi’s®, Dockers®, Signature by Levi Strauss & Co.™, and Denizen™
brands. The company was deeply committed to minimizing the human health and environmental
impact of its clothing manufacturing processes, supporting the goal of eliminating the industrial
releases of hazardous chemicals into the environment—part of the company’s overall long-term
sustainability strategy. On LS&Co.’s website: “Sustainability is sewn into the fabric of
everything we do—from how our clothing is made to the work we do to help protect our planet.”2
Specifically, for jeans and garment finishing (wear patterns and colors), an average of 15
chemicals were used to process one pair of jeans—an amylase enzyme was used to de-size the
garment, cellulase enzymes were used to abrade the garment, potassium permanganate or sodium
hypochlorite (bleach or peroxide) was used to oxidize the garment, pigments or reactive tints
were used to tint the garment and silicone-based softeners were used to soften the garment. For
each of these steps, there were auxiliary chemicals too—acids for balancing pH, lubricants, and
wetting agents to help some of those chemicals adhere better to the garment.
The company’s Vice President of Sustainability Michael Kobori reported to the Chief Supply
Chain Officer David Love. Kobori led a global team of professionals who were each responsible
for a geographical region or functional area. Kobori and his team developed the company’s
sustainability strategies in partnership with business unit leaders, as well as defined global targets
and measured progress. Business unit leaders had sustainability goals within their strategic plans.
One of the company’s board of directors’ committees also had responsibility to assist the board
and review corporate citizenship and sustainability efforts and issues.
1
2
www.levistrauss.com/sustainability/introduction/
www.levistrauss.com/sustainability/introduction/
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LEVI STRAUSS 3
Kobori summarized LS&Co.’s overall sustainability strategy: “At LS&Co., we believe that how
we make our products is as important as what we make. Our sustainability efforts are focused on
three main areas: manufacturing, people, and the planet. We also approach sustainability through
the idea of ‘profits through principles,’ which has been our mission since Levi Strauss founded
the company more than 160 years ago.” He added: “Our commitment to sustainability goes
beyond regulatory compliance or minimizing the environmental impact of our business practices.
Our vision is to build sustainability into everything we do, so that our profitable growth helps
restore the planet.”
A few historical efforts included LS&Co. keeping workers on the payroll during the Great
Depression; in the 1950s, integrating its factories in the South well before the Civil Rights
Movement; in the 1980s, being one of the first to recognize HIV/AIDS and support educational
efforts; and in the early 1990s, when offshore production became more commonplace, being the
first multinational apparel company to establish a comprehensive code of conduct for all of its
suppliers around the world that covered labor, health and safety, and environmental standards—
one of the first companies to initiate the modern corporate social responsibility movement.
In addition, LS&Co. was the first company in its industry to establish global guidelines for water
quality standards for its suppliers; it was one of the first companies in its industry to establish a
Restricted Substances List in 2001; and it was the first to provide financial incentives for garment
suppliers in developing countries to upgrade environmental, health and safety, and labor
standards.3
In 2012, the company signed a Detox Solution Commitment with Greenpeace International that
outlined the company’s commitment and actions toward zero discharge of hazardous chemicals
and joined the Joint Roadmap Toward Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC),
mentioned above. Started in 2011 with adidas Group, C&A, H&M, Li Ning, Nike, and Puma, the
Joint Roadmap was a plan that set a new bar for environmental performance related to chemicals
for the global apparel and footwear industry. It included specific commitments and timelines to
realize this shared goal.
The Supply Chain
At a global company such as LS&Co., the supply chain for a pair of jeans, for example, began
with the design team where a new collection might include more than 100 new products. A brand
such as LS&Co. might work with a chemical company such as Italy-based Garmon Chemicals at
this stage of the prototyping process. After prototypes were approved, they were sourced through
the company’s manufacturing process.
Alberto de Conti, Chief Marketing Officer at Garmon explained: “After the prototyping process,
we traditionally have had problems with brands because they leave the choice of chemistry to
their manufacturers and don’t want to enforce the use of certain greener chemistries due to issues
such as liability and cost, so sometimes we don’t become the commercial partner to the brand.
This has improved a little bit with the Screened Chemistry Program where we have had the
chance to remain the partner beyond prototyping through manufacturing.”
3
www.levistrauss.com/sustainability/introduction/
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LEVI STRAUSS 4
After the design process, there were other players such as mills and laundries, both of which used
“a variety of chemical formulations and auxiliaries,” Sights said. Increasingly, however, the
supply chain was becoming vertical with a mill, sewing plant, and laundry often within one
facility. Linda Gallegos, R&D Project Manager at LS&Co., provided an overview of the process:
“The manufacturer cuts our product, sews and assembles it, and then most of our products have a
garment finish applied to them at the end. Typically, LS&Co.’s vendors were cut-and-sew
vendors and laundries.” Other parts of LS&Co.’s supply chain included mills (where all the
fabrics have their dyes and finishing chemicals applied) and sundries—everything besides the
fabric such as zippers, buttons, and thread.
For example, for the denim fabric alone, a mill spun a cotton bale into yarns. Three-quarters of
those yarns were dyed with indigo (chemicals used at this point related to sizing, wetting agents,
lubricants, and indigo dying) and then woven with the natural yarns in a loom to make denim.
Once that denim came off the loom, it went through a long rolling process that skewed, singed,
shrunk, and prepared it to be cut and sewn. Other mill finishes were applied, such as resins and
coatings for aesthetic effects or performance attributes such as water resistance.
The mill then shipped the fabric to a sewing plant and that fabric was rolled out on long tables
until it was stacked anywhere from 20 to 100 plies high. Then a marker/pattern was laid on top of
it and pieces were cut out to become one part of a pair of jeans. The sewing line would then sew
the different pieces together to become a pair of jeans.
After that, garment finishing or laundries handled all of the garment-finishing applications such
as softeners, garment dyes, de-sizing, and abrasion and wear patterns (of which some were
manual, such as the application of abrasive paper). The laundries created stonewashed looks,
used softening rinses, or created 3-D resin looks on denim. Most of these were chemical-based,
but sometimes simple sanding or lasers were used to take off color from a garment. Sometimes
the laundry was part of the cut-and-sew facility and there were also suppliers that printed on
garments (e.g., T-shirts) as well as the chemical suppliers who supplied them.
LS&Co. had less than 150 direct vendors for tier 1 manufacturing (cut/sew/finish vendors,
excluding mills and licensed businesses) throughout its supply chain. “Our supply chain is
considered small compared to other apparel brands, and we have rationalized our supply chain
from a fabric- and vendor-level significantly,” Gallegos said. “If you talked to other apparel
companies, the number could be much higher. We have a much better handle on our suppliers
than many other brands.”
Chemical Management System
Chemistry and a chemical management system were a part of LS&Co.’s overall sustainability
strategy, according to Kobori: “Chemistry touches all of our sustainability efforts in terms of
manufacturing, people, and planet. For over 100 years, chemistry has been used in the production
of apparel. Over the years, responsible companies have established standards on safe chemical
use that go beyond government regulations. We have always wanted to stay ahead of those
regulations.”
Kobori elaborated on more recent developments related to chemistry: “There have been
significant developments around chemicals by governments that signal to us that this is an issue
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LEVI STRAUSS 5
of growing importance.4 We’ve also seen organizations such as Greenpeace take up the banner of
chemical safety with the apparel and footwear industry. We joined ZDHC, which aims not only
to address protections for consumers and workers, but also to respond to the environmental
concerns around hazardous chemicals. Zero discharge of hazardous chemicals is a very
ambitious goal—as an industry, we need to get together and agree on the standards we’re going to
set and the approaches we’re going to take. Many of the suppliers we use are shared by a number
of brands and retailers so we can work together to achieve our goal.”
In fact, LS&Co.’s green chemistry efforts started to accelerate when ZDHC and Greenpeace
began to “push the levers,” according to Gallegos. She said: “There was definitely more of a
galvanizing force in the company to look at the chemicals we use more closely and to understand
them better, as well as to identify a way that we could make better choices.” Gallegos added:
“Prior to that, our designers were always interested in sustainability, but we still didn’t really
have a way to assess what was better—was using a natural dye really better than a synthetic dye,
for example?” De Conti added on industry change: “Greenpeace put a lot of pressure on brands
five years ago (and still does) and brands have put pressure on companies like ours, which has led
to faster development and change in the industry. Consumers themselves also think and behave
differently today in regards to what they are buying and are savvier.”
LS&Co.’s Chemical Management System was part of the company’s efforts to achieve its goal of
zero discharge of hazardous chemicals, shared by ZDHC. The four components of the Chemical
Management System were: 1) Restricted Substance List, 2) Manufacturing Restricted Substance
List, 3) Global Effluent5 Requirements, and 4) the Screened Chemistry Program. Sights called
the company’s Chemical Management System, the “whole big picture.”
Restricted Substance List (RSL)
Risk-based RSLs had been used in the textile industry since the 1990s by many brands and each
brand had their own RSL, which contained a list of restricted chemicals due to their potential
impact on consumers, workers, and the environment. Such chemicals were usually regulated and
could be used in manufacturing and be present in consumer products as long as they weren’t
above a certain limit. RSLs had been a tool to help brands comply with regulatory requirements.
LS&Co. established its RSL in 2001, and this was the company’s most “robust and mature”
chemical management program.6 As an example, the formaldehyde maximum for an LS&Co.
adult product was 65 ppm (parts per million); or, as another example, the RSL could ban a
chemical or dye such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or phthalates so that a product could not
contain these. If there were questions or concerns regarding a product from a particular vendor,
LS&Co. would work with the vendor to implement RSL testing to test for the specific substances
in question.
Gallegos added: “A RSL complies with regulatory requirements around the world for consumer
safety. LS&Co. uses the most aggressive global requirements for a specific chemical. So if
Japan has the most stringent law on a specific chemical, we’ll adopt that and do another pass
4
Since 2002, the government has continued to increase disclosure requirements—for example, in 2006, the European
Union established REACH, the broad umbrella regulatory framework for chemical registration in Europe, adopted to
improve the protection of human health and the environment.
5
Liquid waste or sewage discharged into a municipal treatment system or body of water.
6
An example of a LS&Co. RSL is located here:
http://levistrauss.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/RSL-2015.pdf
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LEVI STRAUSS 6
based on that regulatory requirement and our knowledge to determine whether we want to
increase it even further.”
On working with vendors/suppliers and the RSL, Gallegos said: “We’re not allowed to work with
any supplier unless they’ve signed our Terms of Engagement and meet our minimum
requirements to produce our products. Vendors have to have the RSL in place and make sure
LS&Co.’s product doesn’t go out with any product safety concerns.” LS&Co. annually updated
its RSL and provided that information to the company’s business partners.
Global Effluent Requirements (GER)
In 1992, LS&Co. released its Global Effluent Requirements (GER), the industry’s first discharge
wastewater quality guidelines for its wet finishing laundries. A GER strategy was important to
the company because water was used to finish jeans in industrial washing machines; jeans were
sometimes washed many times, leading to the use of water and the prevalence of wastewater.
Under LS&Co.’s GER, wastewater was treated to meet local water standards as well as the
company’s GER standards.
Several years later, LS&Co. scaled the requirements, making them mandatory for the company’s
suppliers globally. With these requirements, LS&Co. limited the contaminant levels allowed in
suppliers’ wastewater from wet finishing and minimized the environmental impact to local water
resources. In some countries the water quality requirements were more stringent than local
regulations required.
Manufacturing Restricted Substance List (MRSL)
Building on the RSL, the industry began shifting toward managing input chemistry at the front of
the manufacturing process rather than on the back end, so that chemicals of concern were
eliminated prior to manufacturing. A Manufacturing Restricted Substance List (MRSL) was one
example of this shift. It differed from an RSL because it restricted the chemicals used in the
entire facility, not just those used to finish products.
Anna Walker, Senior Director of Global Policy and Advocacy, elaborated on the relationship
between the RSL and the MRSL in the context of LS&Co.: “Our supply chain will lean heavily
on the positive; if the MRSL is effective, you won’t need the RSL because the MRSL is the front
of the gate. With the RSL, there are some chemicals you can use in your factory to produce the
product, but as long as it doesn’t remain on the product, you’re free to use them; however, the
MRSL will say you can’t use it at all. The RSL is focused on the product; the MRSL takes a
much bigger view and is associated with an entire factory,” (Exhibit 1).
Gallegos added: “Prior to the implementation of an MRSL, most manufacturers focused solely on
chemicals used on the product. The MRSL addresses chemicals used in the factory that workers
could be exposed to.”
ZDHC developed and published an MRSL for the apparel industry in 2015 with input from
brands including LS&Co. and key stakeholders including chemical companies. In 2016, LS&Co.
was planning on adopting ZDHC’s MRSL and rolling it out, aligning the ZDHC MRSL with its
own MRSL. Walker said: “The delivery of the ZDHC MRSL was a big moment. Now that we
have the MRSL, we’re focused on how to bring it to the supply chain and how to conform around
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LEVI STRAUSS 7
communicating to our suppliers on its implementation. We’re also focused on a secondary
goal—it needs to be a tool that’s updated and evolves with the science, it’s not a static tool.”
Screened Chemistry7
LS&Co.’s new Screened Chemistry Program went even further upstream in the supply chain to
the design process, producing a positive list of chemicals that were safer and better for the
environment so that designers could be more proactive at the beginning of product development
with regard to chemicals used to achieve their designs. In the past, LS&Co.’s Eureka Innovation
Lab might have given a supplier laundry a recipe for a certain design look. It would then be “up
to the laundry to replicate this look,” said Gallegos. “They could use any chemical from any
chemical supplier, as long as they knew it would meet our RSL.”
However, the Screened Chemistry Program wanted to change that process from a risk-based one
to a hazard-based one. Hazardous chemicals were ones that showed “intrinsically hazardous
properties (persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT); very persistent and very bioaccumulative (vPVB); carcinogenic, mutagenic and toxic for reproduction (CMR); endocrine
disruptors (ED); or equivalent concern), not just those that have been regulated or restricted in
other regions.”8
Sights called other aspects of the company’s Chemical Management System such as the RSL and
even the MSRL “negative lists” in that they focused on eliminating harmful chemicals after the
fact. RSL and MSRL were about managing risk. Most in the industry used phrases such as
alternative assessment or hazard assessment, but LS&Co. coined “Screened Chemistry.” Sights
said: “We’re looking at the chemicals that we might use before we ever use them to make sure
that they’re safe and best-in-class, removing harmful chemicals, or finding better alternatives.
The long-term vision is that Screened Chemistry can preempt all the other parts of the Chemical
Management System such as the RSL.”
Gallegos provided an example: “Our Screened Chemistry Program calls out formaldehyde as
something we want out of our chemical formulations. As long as there’s an alternative
formulation that doesn’t have formaldehyde, the alternative will be used. Even though that
chemical with formaldehyde probably has no consumer product safety issues, the Screened
Chemistry Program says, ‘We want that out of our supply chain.’”
Kobori said that the conventional risk-based approach led to challenges in the industry, including
the difficulty in getting chemical suppliers to phase out chemicals that could be of concern. “No
one in the chemical industry has the incentive to phase out chemicals of concern because these
chemicals are some of their biggest selling products. To get the industry to do something
voluntarily is challenging and, because of this approach, it’s very difficult to get the right
incentives in place for chemical suppliers to do R&D on chemistries that might be better
alternatives.”
Kobori said that consumers need to demand safer chemicals to make real change: “LS&Co. is
closest to the consumer and we see growing awareness of chemistry, especially in the foods that
people eat and in the growth of the organic movement as well as in the growth of cosmetics and
personal care products. While clothing is not ingested, it’s the next layer of product that comes in
7
8
This section quotes and refers heavily to the Screened Chemistry Framework presentation, 10-29-15.
Levi Strauss & Co., “Commitment to Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals.”
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LEVI STRAUSS 8
contact with people. We believe that moving to safer chemistries is a good thing in the long run,
and it’s a good thing for us as a company to be positioned as a leader of that change. We are
large enough to be able to influence the market. When we signal that we’re interested in moving
toward stronger protections and regulations around chemical use, such as the RSL, GER, MRSL,
and Screened Chemistry, they tend to become industry standards and practice.”
The Program
As LS&Co. developed and piloted the Screened Chemistry Program, it met with 15 brands to get
input and learn what other companies were already doing in the area of hazard assessment.
“They applauded us for the work that we were doing and acknowledged that we were on the
leading edge,” said Gallegos. LS&Co. discovered that a few other brands had done some of their
own work on hazard assessment. “But the scoring and program we’ve developed is unique,” said
Gallegos. “I haven’t heard of anyone developing anything to the extent that we have. Even other
standards such as bluesign® [discussed below] are very risk-based.”
LS&Co.’s Screened Chemistry Program, completed in 2015, was intended to “evaluate chemicals
used to manufacture the company’s products against specific human health and environmental
endpoints to understand their impacts, identify better alternatives where possible, and identify
areas needed for improvement and innovation.”9 The program was intended to, over time,
evaluate chemicals used throughout the supply chain including raw materials in: 1) garment
finishing (laundries), 2) fabric dye and finishing (mills), and 3) sundries. The evaluations were
conducted by ToxServices (a third-party assessor located in Washington, D.C.) because of their
expertise, independence, and protection of the chemical supplier’s intellectual property. Sights
called Margaret Whittaker, the head of ToxServices, an “icon” in the world of safer chemistry.
LS&Co.’s program was based on two existing chemical hazard assessment methodologies that
assessed human health and environmental hazards posed by individual ingredients within a
chemical formulation: U.S. EPA Safer Choice Program and GreenScreen® for Safer Chemicals.
The Safer Choice Standard identified the requirements products and their ingredients needed to
meet to earn the Safer Choice label. The GreenScreen® hazard assessment classified a
substance’s chemical hazards on 18 human health and environmental endpoints ranging from
carcinogenicity to skin sensitization to flammability. GreenScreen® was a chemical hazard
screening method developed by the NGO Clean Production Action (CPA). Walker said that the
EPA and GreenScreen® were both “third-party, transparent processes,” which was important to
the company.
LS&Co. worked with ToxServices to develop a scoring algorithm that could recognize
formulations that exhibited degrees of toxicity. According to LS&Co.: “For chemicals that have
ingredients of concern, the algorithm is intended to weigh these heavier with progressively larger
negative scores based on the likelihood that those ingredients are associated with a human or
ecological/environmental hazard.”10
Once the scoring algorithm had been developed, LS&Co. worked with the company’s vendors11
(laundries, in this case) to identify the chemicals used on LS&Co.’s products, which would
9
LS&Co. Screened Chemistry Framework presentation, 10-29-15, p. 9.
10
LS&Co. Screened Chemistry Framework presentation, 10-29-15, p. 21.
11
Vendors are companies that are supplying LS&Co. with product. Suppliers are supplying to LS&Co.’s vendors
(chemical companies or mills).
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LEVI STRAUSS 9
require screening. The chemical supplier would then disclose product formulation ingredients
(CAS numbers and ingredient percentages12) to ToxServices. After that, ToxServices would
provide a hazard score for the chemical formulation (a weighted average of the ingredient scores)
that ranged from 50 to -50 points. Green or preferred was 35 to 50, Yellow or Needs
Improvement was 20 to 34, and Red or Phase Out was 19 to -50 (Exhibit 2).
Gallegos said: “LS&Co. then has the opportunity to look at the chemicals that we’re using and
say that we have alternatives to this Red and that we don’t need to be using this chemical from
this supplier anymore because there are better alternatives. It gives us the intelligence down to
the ingredient level—what are the concerns of the chemistry and what percentage is it of the
chemistry. We never had this visibility before.”
The Pilot Program
LS&Co. launched a pilot program in 2014 to implement the Screened Chemistry Program
targeting garment-finishing vendors (laundries) for the first phase “due to our direct relationship
and ability to control finish parameters,” said Gallegos.13 Moreover, typically laundries were
developing finishes in the Eureka Innovation Lab, where LS&Co. was already using chemicals
that had been screened.
The vendors needed to work with their chemical suppliers to provide ToxServices with an
inventory of the chemical formulations used to make LS&Co. products. The chemical suppliers
submitted their chemical formulations to ToxServices for third-party hazard screening by
ToxServices. ToxServices would assign a final chemical formulation score based on the
screening results (Exhibit 3). The pilot program included three laundries—initial vendors that
agreed to the pilot program when LS&Co. contacted its vendors. The pilots provided LS&Co.
with a list of chemical suppliers and the chemicals they used to finish LS&Co products.
Gallegos said that in 2015 LS&Co. focused on establishing a baseline related to its vendors and
chemical management: “Right now, we’re trying to get a sense from our vendor base of where
they are with their chemical management. We’re seeing whether our vendors have a technical
representative on site (we require them to) and how much information they have about the
chemicals they’re purchasing (do they have all the MSDS14 chemical sheets, do they know the
raw materials and ingredients of these chemicals, etc.).”
The goal of establishing a baseline was to identify which vendors the company planned to begin
working with on MRSL and Screened Chemistry. Gallegos said: “It will be a phased-in approach
to see who’s ready to take on more chemical management within their facility. If a facility is
ready, then we’ll make sure they go to the next step of chemical management in terms of adopting
the MRSL and the Screened Chemistry Program.”
By the end of 2015, the pilot program had screened 132 chemical formulations and commodity
chemicals (e.g., hydrogen peroxide, bleach) across the three pilot vendors. Of the 132 chemical
formulations, 45 (34 percent) achieved a Green score, 70 (53 percent) achieved a Yellow score,
and 17 (13 percent) achieved a Red score (Exhibit 4). For scoring, each ingredient within the
12
A CAS Number is a short string of text that refers to a chemical substance. CAS Numbers are assigned by the
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society.
13
LS&Co. Screened Chemistry Framework presentation, 10-29-15, p. 21.
14
Material Safety Data Sheet.
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LEVI STRAUSS 10
chemical formulation received an individual rating, which was weighted based on its percentage
within the formulation. The final overall chemical formulation score was the sum of all the
ingredient scores.
“Surprisingly, our pilot vendors were using a lot of chemicals that scored Green or Yellow,” said
Gallegos. “However, this also tells me that all of these chemicals would pass our MRSL and
RSL, even though 17 are Red. The program helped us identify those 17 that we want to get out of
there.” Gallegos also noted the example of categories of chemicals, such as softeners that might
turn up Yellow but could easily be replaced with ones that ranked in the Green category.
Sights said that for the past few development seasons, the Eureka Innovation Lab had used the
evolving and new Screened Chemistry Program’s preferred chemical list (a list of all chemicals
screened to date and their scores) to develop all of its finishes: “We started this two seasons ago
so there’s existing product out there that has already been made using screened chemicals.”
Screening Costs and Chemical Suppliers
LS&Co.’s plan was to have chemical suppliers pay for the chemical screens; however, initially
the company paid for numerous chemical screens to get chemical companies on board. Such
added costs were one of the challenges of the program and process, according to Kobori.
However, the more companies that started to implement the program, the less it would ultimately
cost. In terms of added costs, Gallegos said: “We can’t all of a sudden change to using only
chemicals that have been through our screening process and have our consumers pay for that. We
need to meet the existing cost criteria while using better chemicals.”
Early chemical supplier adopters were Garmon, as well as Switzerland-based Beyond Surface
Technologies (BST), German company CHT and Singapore-based Dystar. By the end of the
pilots conducted in 2015, approximately 12 chemical companies had participated in the program.
ToxServices charged its fees by the CAS number up to approximately $1,500 per CAS number,
so the total screening cost depended on how many CAS numbers a formulation contained
(ranging from 5 to 10, according to LS&Co., but de Conti said it could go up to 20 or more).
Sights said that in the end, the costs were “not that significant.” He said: “If a chemical company
goes through the trouble of developing a formulation, then there’s a lot of expense in that itself—
they have to envision that they’re going to sell enough of it to recoup that expense.”
In addition to paying for a few initial screens, LS&Co. told some chemical companies that if they
invested to have their formulations screened and their profits over the following year did not
cover the initial screening investment, LS&Co. would pay them the difference. Sights said: “We
signed that agreement with a few chemical companies and no one has sent us a bill—early
adopters are actually gaining business.” De Conti provided a chemical supplier perspective: “The
screening money isn’t a huge problem if you’ve decided as a company to focus on green
chemistry. However, development is costly in terms of certification, R&D resources, and
opportunity costs.” He said that Garmon had invested $1 million into the GreenScreen® process
so far.
De Conti also challenged the notion that chemical companies should bear the added cost burden:
“I would like to ask the brands such as LS&Co., if we all know that green chemistry and this
journey has added costs, then how come the chemical companies are expected to bear the cost of
innovation and still required to make their products remain cost neutral? In the case of the
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LEVI STRAUSS 11
Screened Chemistry Program of LS&Co., it’s their program and what they are passionate about—
why is it that the brand doesn’t want to be responsible for a lot of the costs?”
Whittaker at ToxServices argued that chemical companies would receive a certificate and be able
to use that to show other customers that they were “more green” than competitors and that would
be an advantage.
To help address the issue of cost, ToxServices does not charge for screening CAS numbers that a
chemical supplier has already paid to screen (except for a minimal processing fee), and chemical
suppliers pay a reduced cost to screen a CAS number that has already been screened by another
supplier. In addition, chemical suppliers could also pre-engineer their formulations before they
even submitted a chemical for screening to save on cost.
With the three pilots, LS&Co. stayed cost neutral (at the price-per-unit level), while substituting
better alternatives, according to Gallegos. Some drivers of cost included the type of chemical
company laundries worked with—local chemical companies tended to be less expensive than the
large global chemical companies, for example—but the local vendors might not have the right
technical knowledge or chemical documentation. Gallegos said: “With the pilot program, there
were two local suppliers who dropped out of the program and the laundry then bought chemicals
from a global chemical supplier that was more expensive. But, due to the global chemical
company’s new added business, they lowered the price for the laundry, so it worked out in the
end.”
Some chemical companies readily worked with the laundries, said Gallegos and “did not bat an
eye because they are looking toward the future.” Others “struggled initially” while working with
LS&Co., but in the end, the companies reformulated a number of their chemicals to meet the
company’s program. “The Screened Chemistry Program pushed them to make changes,” she
said.
In the case of Garmon, the company has licensed GreenScreen® and positioned themselves as the
first specialty chemical supplier to introduce this certification in the apparel industry.15 De Conti
said that Garmon liked GreenScreen® because it was very transparent in that chemical companies
needed to disclose anything that was in a formulation such as percentages, CAS numbers, etc.
“That’s why some chemical companies are hesitating to use GreenScreen®,” he said.
De Conti said that the new series of products that Garmon launched in 2015 were all
GreenScreen®-certified (40 chemicals), and the adoption of green chemistry was growing.
“More and more brands are interested. Now we have brands that have a full collection of denim
that are fully GreenScreened. We also have brands in Europe and the U.S. that have converted
their production completely 100 percent to GreenScreen® chemistry. The funny thing is that the
brands are quiet about it so far because it’s a touchy subject and they don’t want people asking
about the other products that aren’t GreenScreened, so they’re doing little by little, step-by-step.”
Garmon also gained incremental business because of their participation in LS&Co.’s program:
“Apparel International, a manufacturer in Mexico, was not our customer before, but the Screened
Chemistry Program allowed us to gain new customers such as this.”
15
Garmon incorporated GreenScreen® chemical assessments into its raw materials assessment. The company also
developed specialty chemicals called environmentally conscious chemistry to bleach indigo denim, replacing
traditional chemicals with their Avol Oxy White product
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LEVI STRAUSS 12
In addition, Garmon launched a new innovative bleaching agent, Avol Oxy White, as part of their
GreenScreen®-certified chemicals portfolio to replace potassium permanganate, but Garmon did
not receive adoption as fast as they had expected. “Avol Oxy White is probably the best in terms
of performance because operators don’t have to change anything and it uses the same process, but
it does cost a little bit more,” said de Conti. “The issue is that even though respectable
alternatives exist for many chemicals, they are not being adopted as fast as I would have expected
from the industry. In this industry, people won’t do anything unless they are forced to do so.”
According to Gallegos, the company was working to adopt Avol Oxy White on some finishes in
the near future, but there were other factors in addition to cost that the company faced: “There are
also some issues around shade/cast—a booster needs to be used in some cases not to yellow the
denim, so it’s not an easy transition to flip the switch.” Scott Echols, Technical Director at
ZDHC and former Nike Director of Sustainable Chemicals said: “It often seems like things are a
straight drop-in, but most of the time, there’s usually something that has to be changed. Because
most of the brands rely on the factories to make the change and if it fails once (made a mistake or
didn’t read the instructions), most people will just say that it didn’t work.”
Other chemical suppliers beyond Garmon were larger and “slower moving.” De Conti added:
“We can be much faster and more flexible than other companies and that can be an advantage for
a company such as LS&Co. because they can make faster progress by working with us.”
Despite the initial successes of working with chemical companies, there were some that were still
more resistant to screening chemicals. Gallegos said: “We’re trying to uncover some of the
chemical companies that have problems with the cost of screening and understand why.
Sometimes where the laundry is buying the chemicals from is very removed from us.” Walker
added: “The big challenge is that there are several big chemical suppliers in Europe that are
supportive and that supply a lot of brands (due to the legacy of REACH16), but there are some
smaller local chemical suppliers that are less knowledgeable and less willing to change. That’s
going to be a lot harder on many fronts with them.” Walker said that some of the more resistant
chemical suppliers might also do less work with LS&Co. and the apparel industry in general and
might have less incentive to make changes.
Other Challenges
Another challenge identified during the pilot process included the length of time needed for
screens due to a bottleneck with the third-party assessor. Whitaker from ToxServices did not plan
on scaling her organization, an LLC, but hoped to develop a network of similar third-party
assessors that she could recommend to brands such as Nike in the future. She said: “I’m trying to
come up with a community-based system that still ensures that costs are reasonable and the best
tools in the trade are used in terms of assessments. I’m happy to see it keep growing and scale,
but it’s going to take another entity such as my company that’s willing to work collaboratively to
share the same core data and assessment set.”
On the additional challenge of disclosing intellectual property, Sights said: “The first challenge
was convincing the chemical companies that their intellectual property was safe and confidential.
We’ve proven the confidentiality part because ToxServices works in other industries like
electronics and cosmetics—industries that are further along than the textile and apparel
16
See prior footnote on REACH.
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LEVI STRAUSS 13
industry—so they have a pretty good track record. That’s progressing fine and there’s a good
trust level now.”
Another challenge was the multiple standards across the industry, according to Gallegos. “There
are more than 200 RSLs from all the different brands out there. These RSL requirements all vary.
Then you layer in the MRSL, and add on top of that the industry certifications such as GOTS
(Global Organic Textile Standard) and bluesign®, and then you have governmental requirements
such as REACH. So the chemical companies tell us that they will screen for us, but ask us which
standards we want them to use because all of the standards cost them money. The issue is having
to meet multiple, different requirements for different brands.”
De Conti agreed: “LS&Co. is asking us to do use their Screened Chemistry Program. Other
companies have their own approaches. Because of the lack of a cross-industry standard, we have
to make choices. It’s all irritating and frustrating. At one extreme, you have LS&Co. with
Screened Chemistry and it’s based on positive screening and you certify according to certain
criteria such as GreenScreen®. That is the best way to manage risk, in my opinion. On the
opposite side, there are other companies that focus on a list of bad chemicals that they don’t want
to see in your formulations. They ask us to do full chemical assessments on each lot of chemicals
that we supply to our manufacturers and the lot of chemicals we use on their garments. It’s just
too unnecessarily complex. Only big chemical companies can afford that; we can’t.”
De Conti said that bluesign® asked brands, manufacturers, and chemical suppliers to each to pay
$20,000 to $30,000 a year: “Different players in the industry wonder why they have to pay so
much. Traditionally it works well in outdoor apparel, but it has never worked in apparel where
our margins are lower.”
Scaling Screened Chemistry
The goal of the company’s Screened Chemistry Program from the start was to gain industry-wide
adoption. Walker said: “Individual action by one brand will not create the scale and scope of
change that we need—particularly in the apparel industry where you have a shared supply chain
where any one vendor could be manufacturing and doing business with three to 12 brands. If we
all communicate with the same set of expectations and tools, this can lead to faster uptake of the
change we’d like to see.”
However scaling the Screened Chemistry Program was going to be a significant challenge:
“Textile manufacturing is an old industry and attitudes are outdated,” said Gallegos. “It’s about
changing a very big industry to think differently. And because we’re so engrained in this risk
management operation, we need to look at how we can change the industry to be proactive,
precautionary, and hazard-based to remove harmful chemicals from the get-go. That’s the heart
of Screened Chemistry. We’re at the beginning and we have a path forward now.”
On the overlap in the industry, for example, a laundry in Mexico was doing work for LS&Co. and
another brand in the same building: “If they’re running a softener on our jeans, they’re probably
running the same softener on the other brand’s jeans too,” said Sights. “If because of LS&Co. the
laundry has switched to something that is screened and green in our color code, as long as it’s
cost neutral, they’re going to run that on the other brand’s product as well because it’s too
complicated for them to buy two different softeners. In our palette so far, it’s been cost neutral—
they’ve maintained their cost, their lead times, and quality.”
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LEVI STRAUSS 14
At the end of the day, Sights was optimistic: “Industry scaling seems daunting, but it’s not really
as daunting as one might think. Many of our suppliers also work with a lot of our competitors.
There’s also only so many CAS numbers that are used by different chemical suppliers. If you’re
building a softener, there are a few CAS numbers you can use. If you’re building a resin, there
are a few CAS numbers you can use. If you’re building a de-sizing agent, the same applies.”
Sights continued: “Our thought is that by using this third-party screener and building a database
of positive CAS numbers and formulations, we’ll get through the existing CAS numbers pretty
quickly. New chemical companies might come on board or existing chemical suppliers might
come up with new products or formulations, but they’re still going back to the same CAS
numbers. We’re proving that. Our list of approved formulations is growing as more chemical
suppliers and facilities are coming on board, and the ratio to new CAS numbers is actually
declining—chemical suppliers are coming up with different things to sell, but they’re using the
existing list of screened CAS numbers because we’re screening them ahead of time for everyone.
In a few years, we’ll march through our entire supply chain—first the laundries and then the
mills.”
ZDHC and Other Brands
In November 2015, LS&Co. presented the Screened Chemistry Program to various apparel
brands during a ZDHC meeting. “That was exciting for us because we could share our work with
26 brands in the room,” said Gallegos. At the meeting, LS&Co. did not include its name on the
program and also told ZDHC that it could be a ZDHC program shared by all brands. ZDHC
thought this was a good idea, according to Gallegos. Echols said: “I think LS&Co.’s Screened
Chemistry Program makes sense. How they approached it is similar to what we did at Nike and
similar to what was published by ZDHC in terms of an approach to looking at hazard classes
you’d want to take into consideration. I think LS&Co. pretty much followed these, whether they
knew that or not.” ZDHC wanted to work with LS&Co. to put together an accelerator group of
five or six brands that would pilot the program.
LS&Co. was meeting with Nike in 2016 to see how they could collaborate on certain aspects of
the program. Echols said: “It will be interesting to see how LS&Co. and Nike work together.
Sometimes Nike likes to be the leader. We had a similar process there that followed the
GreenScreen® and our RSL and screened chemicals five to 10 years ago. Our challenge there
was that Nike is so big it was hard to determine how to implement something such as this. We
did a lot of things that Nike didn’t like to talk about publicly such as having a program for
chemical suppliers to bring us greener chemistries and they would be rewarded.”
Before LS&Co. presented to ZDHC, it presented to each of the ZDHC brands to get their
feedback. Sights said: “Some brands were very positive, but felt like they don’t have the
resources right now. There are also brands that will feel the advantages of the program because
we share so many mills and laundries with them. Others were non-committal.” Walker said:
“The people we’ve shared the program with are typically compliance people so their experience
has been policing tools such as RSLs and MRSLs. Screened Chemistry is something that moves
beyond those policing tools, but can work well alongside them. We’re not necessarily dealing
with toxicologists and chemists so it may take them a little while to wrap their heads around what
we’re proposing.”
Echols said that one of the biggest challenges was that “not every brand was in the same place so
you can’t just adopt a program and implement it at the same time with everyone.” Also, he said
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LEVI STRAUSS 15
that not all brands handle chemicals in the same way in terms of who was responsible. In some
cases, it might fall within the quality group, but that group might not have interaction with
ZDHC, so there would have to be “a lot of internal selling going on.”
bluesign® and Standards
Walker’s biggest concern for scaling success was bluesign® and common standards because
bluesign® had already been adopted by a number of sportswear brands. “It will be important for
us to work with bluesign® to find solutions and collaborate,” she said.
“We looked at the Responsible Down Standard (RDS)17 that North Face put together that was
gifted to the Textile Exchange, which allowed it to scale. Scalability has been our vision with
Screened Chemistry and bringing it to ZDHC and bluesign®—they have the bigger infrastructure
and experience to bring this to everyone than LS&Co. ever could on our own.” Walker cited the
importance of ZDHC’s organizational infrastructure with a staff, Executive Director, and a Board
of Directors.
Echols said on scaling, bluesign®, and collaboration: “I’d like to see all the brands get behind one
of these standards and push it in one direction. The reality is that they’re all similar enough in
terms of what they’re doing in terms of the hazard classes they’re looking at. The worst thing
that could happen is to have people aligning on different tools so that people can’t agree on what
chemicals need to be substituted.” Echols said that brands oftentimes have difficulties working
together for competitive reasons and a “not invented in my backyard” way of thinking, so it might
be easier for a sportswear company to work with a fashion brand than for two sportswear brands
such as adidas and Nike to work together.
Echols also said that he would prefer starting with what’s already available such as bluesign®,
even though it might not be perfect, instead of creating new systems. “It would be a miss if
LS&Co. doesn’t work with bluesign® on this because bluesign® already has an established
system. This would enable bluesign® to look at a different area like denim.” He said that ZDHC
was in discussions with bluesign®: “I’ve known the CEO Peter Waeber for 10 years since we
worked with them at Nike and I have a lot of confidence in his system. I don’t think today you
can do everything on hazard because there are a lot of chemicals that there may not be any
replacements for. bluesign® is closed about what they do. I spend a lot of my time interpreting
for people and telling different organizations how their programs might fit together. I would like
people to see how they could both evolve and show bluesign® and LS&Co. the benefits of
working together on this. In my own mind, I do have ideas on how they could fit together. I
think bluesign® is pretty open to things.”
Echols said on making real change in the industry: “I think if people just followed the RSLs and
stuck to that or used bluesign®, we’d solve 70 percent of our problems. It depends on the will of
the brands to make their laundries and mills follow it. The first thing is to have the brands be
willing to drop their laundries and mills if they’re not complying. It’s easy to focus on the new
bright and shiny things like a new tool for chemical screening, but if brands just know where their
factories are or make sure their waste water treatment plants are turned on, and picked off the low
17
The RDS allowed companies to ensure that the down in their products came from ethically treated geese. The North
Face developed the standard in partnership with Control Union, a global certification organization, and Textile
Exchange for research, writing, and stakeholder review.
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LEVI STRAUSS 16
hanging fruit, we’d make big leaps. People ask when we will have chemicals to replace the
banned ones, and we already have 80 percent of them, but no one is using them.”
Next Steps
As Kobori reflected on LS&Co.’s accomplishments in the area of Chemical Management and
Screened Chemistry, he felt proud of his team for their work and progress on a hazard-based
assessment program. However, he also recognized that much needed to be done and many
barriers existed.
The company’s goal was to have 100 percent of its laundry vendors implementing the Screened
Chemistry Program by 2020. Kobori and his team also planned to continue to push the Screened
Chemistry Program through the ZDHC mechanisms and pilot with the brands who were willing
to partner. The team also planned to map out the supply chain to see where LS&Co. shared
vendors with other brands.
In 2016, LS&Co. also planned to focus on mills because the company did not currently have a
methodology to screen dyes that existed primarily within the mills. Gallegos said: “Dyes are
pretty hard to assess. We plan on working with industry experts and potentially another brand to
work on dye assessment as a mid-term goal.” Sights added: “One of the weaknesses of our
Screened Chemistry Program is color—dyes are not well-documented. Using GreenScreen® and
EPA Safer Choice—there’s not that much information out there on dyes.
Echols at ZDHC provided his perspective on challenges and next steps: “The challenge for
LS&Co. is to figure out how to prioritize what to go after—where to spend a limited amount of
resources to tackle the issues. I think LS&Co. has gone about it the right way, but now how do
you assess which opportunity you want to go after?”
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LEVI STRAUSS 17
Case Discussion Questions
1. What internal and external factors is LS&Co. responding to with the Screened Chemistry
Program? How is this program different from other chemical management strategies
within the textile industry?
2. How can LS&Co. advance its screened chemistry approach? Who are the key partners?
What are the largest barriers to the adoption of LS&Co.’s Screened Chemistry approach?
Is there a role for businesses, NGOs, and governments outside of the apparel industry?
3. Who should bear the responsibility and cost for screening chemistries? Who stands to
gain from having chemicals screened for safety? Are there ways to share this cost?
4. What leverage does ZDHC have on the apparel industry? Is ZDHC the best avenue for
LS&Co. to advance its Screened Chemistry Program?
5. Traditional approaches to corporate strategy emphasize the competitive nature of
business with the objective to achieve a “competitive advantage.” Porter’s 5 Forces
model18 depicts companies within an industry in a series of competitive battles with their
industry peers and their suppliers. How might these traditionally competitive-based
views of business hinder widespread adoption of LS&Co.’s Screened Chemistry
approach across the apparel industry? What might be done to overcome this?
18
The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy by Michael Porter available at https://hbr.org/2008/01/the-fivecompetitive-forces-that-shape-strategy
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LEVI STRAUSS 18
Exhibit 1 Chemical Management Continuum
Source: LS&Co.
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Exhibit 2 Scoring
Source: LS&Co.
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Exhibit 3 Process Map
Source: LS&Co.
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LEVI STRAUSS 21
Exhibit 4 Pilot Results
Source: LS&Co.
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